Wall Street Opens Lower on Covid Worries; Altria Hit Again; Dow Down 110 Pts By Investing.com

By Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — U.S. stock markets fell at the opening on Tuesday as renewed fears about the global pandemic weighed on sentiment toward internationally active companies. 

The coronavirus is spiraling out of control in India and, increasingly, Pakistan, two countries that are home to over 20% of the world’s population and over 14% of its gross domestic product. That’s leading to the country suspending the export of vaccines to countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world, slowing global progress toward herd immunity. 

By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 115 points, or 0.3%, at 33,962 points, while the S&P 500 was down 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, as is usual when pandemic concerns dominate, paring overnight losses to trade effectively unchanged.

The day was dominated by a slew of earnings but arguably the biggest eye-catcher was the sustained weakness of Altria (NYSE:MO), which fell another 6.5% on the back of a Wall Street Journal report saying that the administration is looking at new regulation to cut the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. That would make them less addictive, putting fresh pressure on long-term sales.  Altria, which owns the Marlboro brand, had already fallen 6% on Monday in response to the initial news.

Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU) stock and Futu (NASDAQ:FUTU) stock also stood out for non-earnings reasons. The railroad operator received a rival bid from Canadian National Railway Co (TSX:CNR), propelling it 15% higher. Meanwhile the digital brokerage platform fell 15% after announcing a secondary offering of ADRs after the close on Monday.

Of the companies reporting earnings in the last 24 hours, International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) stood out with a 3.8% gain, after reporting its biggest revenue gain in 11 quarters, thanks to a steady increase in adoption of its cloud subscription models.

United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) stock went the other way, falling 6.6% after reporting a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter, unable to offset higher fuel costs with a comparable rise in passenger numbers.

Elsewhere, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock rose 2.8%, rebounding from concerns about a fatal crash in Texas. CEO Elon Musk said preliminary data collected by the company suggested that its Autopilot software was not engaged at the time of the crash. Harris County police had said at the weekend that neither of the men killed in the crash was sitting in the driver’s seat. Tesla had also been the subject of a viral protest in China by a lone woman alleging quality defects at an auto show in China. 

China was also at the heart of concerns about Nike (NYSE:NKE) stock, which fell 3% to test a five-month low after Citigroup (NYSE:C) analysts downgraded it due to the risk of a backlash to its stance on human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Nike is one of a handful of companies to have been ostracized on Chinese social media for distancing itself from allegations of slave labor in Xinjiang.